Ghosts of Narnia
by Lothloriel
Summary: A series of drabbles about the four children's different reactions in the days following the end of their trips to Narnia. Each chapter reads as a stand-alone. Chapter 3 is up.
1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Homecoming

_**This world and its inhabitants belong to C.S. Lewis. I am borrowing them for my own amusement and will return them unharmed. **_

**8ooo8ooo8ooo8**

**PETER**

I trip now, over my own feet. I have to concentrate to walk up or down stairs, because I don't recall how to walk with such short legs, and such little weight. My center of gravity is different, my stride all wrong.

My hip feels bare without the comforting weight of the sword that hung there for so many years, but my hand still flies to grasp the invisible hilt when I am startled or angry.

When I walk past a mirror, I don't recognise the pale-faced boy who looks out at me. Look at his dark eyes, so lost and confused... he doesn't even have his first beard yet. This cannot be me!

The servants laugh behind their hands when they hear me speak, and even I can hear how out of place the high courtly phrases are, and so I have begun to train myself out of them, trying to recall the way I spoke all those years ago.

**EDMUND**

My voice breaks, and so I have gone back to not speaking, merely sitting and listening to the others. Often I catch myself reaching to stroke my beard—a habit I have had for years—and my fingers meet only soft, bare skin.

I took the sword from the suit of armor in the hall today. I could barely lift it, and my little boy's arms ached from the effort.

This body is small, weak and flabby. I cannot even run as I used to, running in the early morning with the bite of the wind clearing all thoughts from my mind, and so I work each day to trim and shape it, hoping to find a way to be at rest.

I do not even venture to the upper hall where the wardrobe stands. I do not know which I fear more...that it will not open to Narnia, or that it will, and we will see ourselves—our _real _selves, the Kings and Queens, ruling over our beloved country.

**SUSAN**

I think the oddest feeling of all is the sudden weightlessness of my head. From hair that brushed the floor, I have gone to a school-girl style that only reaches my shoulders.

I feel shockingly bare, in my short skirts and simple blouses. Wool and serge feel so coarse against skin that recalls the soft brush of silk and velvet. I still expect the rustle of skirts as I walk, and the weight of a crown on my head.

The Professor smiles at us, fond and yet a little sad, and somehow I believe he understands, at least a little of what we are feeling...

I worry for my country. What will Peridan say, when he hears that Their Majesties did not return from the hunt? I can imagine the hue and cry that will go up, the fruitless searches throughout the Shuddering Woods. They are wise enough not to grieve us as dead, but to know that we have left as mysteriously as we appeared.

**LUCY**

I forgot how short I was—not that I was ever very tall, but I'm almost as small as a Mouse! I have to call Peter or Susan if I want to reach anything on a high shelf, or even open a window.

I talked to the cat today, a long discussion about Silverpaws, the grey tabby who so efficiently ran messages in Cair Paravel. She looked back at me and then began to wash her ears. I don't believe she listened to a word I said, and she didn't know how to run a message either.

Peter hides in his room, or in some forgotten corner of the house, and when he comes out his face is weary and his eyes are full of pain. Susan still walks like a queen, with the short brisk steps that always seemed to float her across a marble floor, but now merely make her look impatient. Edmund is quieter than ever, and drives himself to breaking, running and lifting weights, shadow boxing, fencing with a foil made of willow.

And I? I sit, and remember, and wonder. I believe we will return...of course we must return. When our tasks here are done, Aslan will bring us home.

**8ooo8ooo8ooo8**


	2. It Is Caspian's Land

_**This world and its inhabitants belong to C.S. Lewis. I am borrowing them for my own amusement and will return them unharmed. **_

**8ooo8ooo8ooo8**

**PETER**

The last time. Very last time. That's what he said, and yet—there was a promise, of a kind, behind the words, and somehow I believe that Aslan will make it right someday. But still the sting is there. I feel it the sideways glances Ed shoots me when I'm not looking, in the bitterness of Susan's brief letters, in the memories of my most beloved country. So short a time that we spent there, and yet what would we have done, if we had stayed? It is Caspian's land now, and he will rule it well—he has Aslan's confidence, as well as mine.

It is easier, this time, I think. I had not quite fallen into my old habits and tricks of speech, but I did catch myself using the royal _We_ the other day. Perhaps it's because I'm older, or because we didn't stay as long...or perhaps it's the promise that we can find Aslan in this world as well. I find myself picking up the pace whenever I see a glimmer of gold breaking through the grey of a London afternoon.

Professor Kirke—or Uncle Digory, as he's asked us to call him privately, has helped me understand a little more about waiting. It still amazes me that he and Aunt Polly were at the very Creation, and I know he, too, longs for the day when he will breathe the sweet, free air of Narnia again. Studying with him is perhaps the only distraction that I could manage, and I am learning what it means to be a good man here in England.

**SUSAN**

It isn't fair. I know I sound childish, but it truly isn't fair! To bring us back for so short a time, and send us away forever... I cannot bear it. Is it punishment for not having believed Lucy that day in the woods? Punishment for somehow having failed him? But Aslan knows best, Lucy says, trying to help me understand it. Aslan knows what he is doing. It will work out.

I'm sorry, Lucy, but I think you're wrong. It won't work out. Mother and Father are taking me to America for holidays—maybe there I will find some peace, some distraction from this constant nagging ache of memory. Don't write to me as if we were Queens still! You may be, but I am not. Maybe I never really was. Maybe it was all, somehow, just a dream... the fancies of children playing make-believe.

**EDMUND**

I told Peter that the only reason Aslan was letting me return was because he knew Aunt Alberta would kill me when she found out I'd lost my new torch. He's doing better—he actually laughed at that one. Easy for him to laugh, he's not going to stay with her this summer. I think it's been good for him, going to study with the Professor, though I wish I could go to, by Jove! It's going to be bad enough being with bloody Eustace all summer, but if he doesn't treat Lu with respect...

I was going to say I'd challenge him. Hah. Because I can do that, here. Maybe I could, if we were both grown... or if Eustace wasn't such a nancy. I suppose that's unfair. After all, he has lived with Alberta and Harold his entire life. I was an ass myself, and at least he's never sold anyone out to their worst enemy.

Peter says I need to think of myself, rather than worrying about him and Lucy and Susan. I told him not be a ninny, I wasn't worrying about Susan. But I know what he means. I think I'm really all right. I feel as if we accomplished what we were meant to do with Caspian. He's on the throne now, and he will rule well. We couldn't have hung around, a group of Kings and Queens right out of history, ruling the kingdom for him.

If and when Lu and I go back, I think it will be the last time for us as well... and it will be all right.

**LUCY**

I've dreaded going away to school for years, but I barely noticed it now that it's happened, I've been so caught up with Narnia. There's been so much to process that it's occupied all my brain-space. Although I like it here, I'm rather looking forward to going home, so that I can sit, and think, and talk with Peter and Edmund. I would talk with Susan, but Susan... she doesn't talk anymore.

Well, that's not entirely true. She talks a good deal really, but she doesn't say much. It's very odd. And she runs around a good bit with the other girls—the silly ones, who roll their waistbands up to shorten their skirts, and wear lipstick after school. Sometimes she will sit and talk with me, but it isn't very often, and never when her friends are there. Mother says that Susan is just becoming a lady, but I remember when Susan began to "become a lady" last time, and it was nothing like this!

I get up every morning to greet the sun, though I can't play my flute here to welcome the sunrise. Our dorm has an eastern window, and I imagine, for a moment, that I am standing on the eastern balcony of Cair Paravel. I can pretend that I am gazing out over my seas, watching for the gold that tints the sky... and then, as the sun breaks through, for an instant I can almost see the face of Aslan smiling at me.

**8ooo8ooo8ooo8**


	3. In the Dawn Treader's Wake

_**This world and its inhabitants belong to C.S. Lewis. I am borrowing them for my own amusement and will return them unharmed. **_

**8ooo8ooo8ooo8**

**EUSTACE**

Edmund says that what I'm feeling is grief. If it is, I don't care for it much. I feel as if I've left a limb back in Narnia, or some other important bit of myself, like (Lucy says) my heart. Although really, I suppose I've just left the jackass part of myself behind.

Alberta says I'm tiresome, and I told her I preferred being tiresome to being asinine. She would have been much angrier if she understood what asinine meant, but I did apologize, and say I'd try to do better. I do mean to do better, but I don't think Alberta will agree with me that I've improved already. She seems to think my cousins have ruined me forever.

Lucy and Ed don't seem as upset as I feel about leaving, even though Aslan told them they couldn't go back. I feel horrible, but can't help hoping that I will, someday. Of course I haven't said so, but I think they know. It's strange, though—I've yet to actually set foot in Narnia proper, though Lucy assures me that being on a Narnian ship is almost as good.

The summer feels all too short now, as we spend our days walking or picnicking, talking nonstop about Narnia. Lu and Ed are full of stories from their time of reigning, and from the last time they saw Caspian. They even know someone who was there when Narnia first came to being! I wonder if he would know how to go back...

**LUCY**

I think now I understand just a little bit of what Peter meant when he said that the goodbye wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. It broke my heart to leave Narnia again, just as it always has, but I am somehow still at peace. I feel as though I did what I was called for, and it was the right thing to leave, even though it was so difficult to do.

One of the first things we did when we got back was write a very long letter to Peter and Uncle Digory. We wrote it so piecemeal that it might be more confusing than anything, but we told Peter that he must see about arranging for us all to see each other and tell the whole story as soon as possible. Caspian had asked me to pass on his greetings, so I wrote to Susan as well, even though Ed said I was probably just wasting my time and Aunt Alberta's paper.

Eustace is ever so much better than he used to be, and we do have splendid times. We go walking together every day, and tell him all the stories of the old days. He had already heard most of the stories about Caspian, but we tell him about the battle for Beruna, and the time we almost fought a war with Calormene, and of that first endless winter. We've taught him to greet the sun with us, playing Aslan's music, and he's even found an old hand-drum that he's rather good with.

Aslan, I've begun to find you here. I feel you in the sun, and the sky, and the breeze. I catch glimpses of you in the small kindnesses that Eustace does for everyone around him. And for now, this is enough.

**EDMUND**

Mother used to say that everything gets easier the oftener you do it. Well, I've left Narnia three times now and it isn't any easier. I wish I had Lu's way of taking it all with grace and implicit trust, but I can't help feeling the way I do. Eustace understands more of how I feel, ("Like being kicked in the gut," I said. "Like being kicked a little lower," he said.) but it was the long letter from Peter that helped the most. Peter's letters are almost always cheerful, but this was the first time he'd bared his soul to me about the grief he felt at being locked out of his country. He says Uncle Digory is writing to me, too, and I know Uncle Digory will understand that I feel as if I was alive for a few short months and now I am dead again.

You will never come back. Those were Aslan's words. Never. Eustace tries to hide the glint of hope in his eyes, but I see it there, and try to be glad for him. I find some solace in the long talks we have together, Lu and Eustace and I, spending hours walking through the little park and telling stories of the Golden Age. Peter shipped us the old wooden swords he and I used to practice with, and I've begun to teach Eustace some more Narnian swordplay, well-hidden from his parents in the fields beyond the house.

And though we haven't talked about it, all three of us search for a sign that Aslan, as he promised, is here in England. Lucy seems to be at peace, but she has always been able to find Aslan when the rest of us are lost. But I'm not Lucy, Aslan, I can't believe here when I can't see you or hear you or touch you.

I believe I'll find you, Aslan, because you promised me I would. I will find you, and I will learn to be happy here in England. But always, I think, always I will remember the scent and feel and sound of running in the crisp early dawn at Cair Paravel, and I will grieve for what I've lost.

**8ooo8ooo8ooo8**


End file.
